CW Upfronts: Smaller Fall Schedule Announced with Pretty People EverywhereTuesday, May 13, 2008

The CW announced its fall schedule today and it features all good-looking people. I suppose one could make the argument that all television features good-looking people, but not to the extreme extent that the CW has taken it. You see, most of the CW's Fall schedule not only features good-looking people, the series themselves are about those people being good-looking, or at least it's a very important part of the series. There are three hours of new programming on the CW's Fall schedule, one of which may include the most highly-anticipated new series going into next season.

Before any Reaper fans go ballistic and worry about why the series isn't on the Fall schedule, don't worry. The CW has ordered 13 episodes of Reaper, which will hit the air at mid-season. There's a very good chance that it will take over Smallville's time slot at some point, but nothing is set in stone.

Here is a breakdown of the CW's Fall schedule, followed by a look at the new series.

90210
You know what this is – it's the spin-off of Beverly Hills 90210. Jennie Garth is returning, and so maybe Tori Spelling from the original cast. The CW is expecting a big residual audience consisting of fans from the original, so the new 90210 better impress people right from the get-go.

Privileged (Formerly Surviving the Filthy Rich)
A series about a 23-year old Yale graduate who, in one day, is fired by a cosmetics company and then hired to be a tutor and chaperone for two twins in the high-class world of Palm Beach. Think The O.C. meets Gossip Girl.

Stylista
The new Tyra Banks produced reality show, follows a group of wannabe fashion journalists as they compete for a job at Elle Magazine.

Thoughts
If this schedule looks a bit light, it's because it is. Earlier this month, the CW announced it was selling off it's Sunday nights, outsourcing an entire three-hour block of programming. If the CW every hopes to break into the Big Four networks and stop being referred to as a "netlet" this is not the way to do it.

While you can admire the CW for trying to focus al its energies on a simpler schedule, the fact remains that, with the ANTM reruns Friday nights, the CW is only producing nine original hours of programming per week, less than half of what some of the major networks do.

Nonetheless, this is a generally solid lineup. Mondays and Thursdays remain exactly the same, Wednesdays look poised to dominate the Tyra crowd, and Tuesdays seem to be a newer version of Mondays. For those two nights, you can probably juggle those four teen soap dramas and put them in any combination, and the schedule would work exactly the same. And without WWE Friday Night Smackdown, the CW seems to have given up on Fridays, turning it into a dumping ground for shows that aren't about sexy young rich white kids.